Authors: Florence Osmund
Daughters (11 page)
“Yes. And so do I. I’d like you to meet them.”
Karen hesitated. “I don’t know, Marie. I’d feel so out of place there.”
Marie looked at Karen without saying anything.
“You know what I mean. I’d be the only…”
“Nothing I’ve said has had any affect on you, has it?”
“C’mon, don’t be mad at me. I just see things how they really are.”
Marie sighed.
“Okay.” Karen relented. “Count me in.”
“Good. Now tell me about the things you wanted to talk about while I was gone.”
“Oh, nothing really.”
“They must have been important then.”
“Well, maybe one thing. Remember Maurice Cooper?”
“The lawyer next door to your shop?”
Her face flushed. “Well…we sorta went out.”
“What?! You waited all this time to tell me that? You louse! You went out with him? Where? And how did that come about?”
Karen pulled out a piece of chocolate from her pants pocket and popped it in her mouth.
“Okay, so one day I was locking up the back door of my store, and he was leaving his office the same time, and we kinda bumped into each other. Our cars were parked side by side, so we walked over to them together, just passing the time of day kind of thing. I was unlocking my door, and he said, ‘Are you hungry?’ I said, ‘Yeah, kind of.’ And he said, ‘Want to grab some dinner with me?’ And I said, ‘Okay.’ So we went to Mario’s and had pizza.”
“What’s he like? When I talked to him in his office that one time, I remember thinking he was kind of stiff. I don’t remember him ever smiling, even once.”
“I know he gives off that first impression sometimes. But he’s nice, actually.”
“So are you going to see him again?”
She grinned. “Already did.”
Marie threw up her arms. “Okay, tell me more.”
Karen pulled another piece of chocolate from her pocket and ate it. “Well, while we were at dinner, he asked me what I was doing for Thanksgiving, and I told him I wasn’t doing anything, and he said he wasn’t either, so we ended up at his house cooking a turkey.”
“You’re kidding. What else? Wait a minute. I rarely ever see you eat candy, and now you’ve shoved two pieces of chocolate in your mouth in the last two minutes. What’s with that?”
“Did I? Anyway…we went out again last Sunday. Saw
On the Town
and then had dinner at Madame Woo’s.”
“So you really like him?”
“I like him okay. But don’t get carried away. He’s just a nice guy.”
“Wait! What about Christmas? Wouldn’t you rather spend it with him?”
“No. He’s going back east to spend it with his family.”
Marie flashed a smile. “Well, I am so happy for you. It’s been quite awhile since you’ve dated. How long has it been?”
“Whoa! We’re not dating really. Just friends. Nothing more than that.” Karen didn’t meet Marie’s gaze.
“Right.”
“No, really.”
“Did you kiss?”
“Well, yeah, but…”
“Then it’s a date, my dear.”
“It wasn’t that kind of kiss.”
“Doesn’t matter. It’s still a date.”
She shot Marie a lopsided grin, reaching in her pocket and pulling out yet another piece of chocolate. “Forget it. You’re hopeless.” She wolfed down the chocolate and got up to leave. “Gotta go. See ya later.”
Even though she knew she had had enough, Marie poured herself another glass of wine after Karen left, the rampant thoughts of her Thanksgiving visit still swirling in her head.
Jonathan called Marie the following week. “Marie, did you say Richard went to jail for a short time earlier this year?”
“Yes. For skimming.”
“Well, my dear, if that was a felony, I think I may have some good news for you.”
“What’s that?”
“I spoke with an attorney client of mine who practices family law, and he told me you would have solid grounds for divorce if your husband was ever convicted of a felony subsequent to your marriage.”
Marie’s heart raced. It may have been good news on one front, but it frightened her to think about what Richard would do if she filed for divorce.
“I don’t know, Dad. What concerns me is that I know he won’t just accept the fact I want a divorce and be civil about it. He’ll do something…anything he can to either try to get me back or scare me.”
“What do you think he’ll do?”
“I don’t know. That’s the scary part.”
“Here’s what I propose. Let’s you and I meet with this attorney when you’re here at Christmas and make sure we know all your options, and then you can make an informed decision as to what to do.”
The next day, Marie went to the local library to renew her library card with the intention of looking further into divorce law for herself. When she arrived, the clerk behind the counter was giving an elderly woman a hard time about something. The woman was a Negro and appeared to be somewhere in her seventies. Marie had never seen colored people in the library before, or anywhere in town for that matter.
As soon as Marie reached the counter, the clerk looked at her and said, “May I help you?”
Marie looked at the elderly woman’s helpless face and said to the clerk, “I think she was before me.”
“No. I’m through with her,” the clerk said with a disgusted tone in her voice.
The older woman turned and walked away. Marie followed her out of the library.
“Ma’am?” Marie said. The woman kept on walking. “Ma’am?” Still no response. Marie caught up to her and tapped her on the shoulder.
The woman stopped and turned to look at Marie. “What do you want?”
“What just happened back there? That clerk was so rude to you.”
“And so what else is new?” She seemed to be out of breath.
Marie took her arm and tried to lead her to a bench, but the woman jerked her arm free.
“What do you think you’re doing?”
“I was just trying to help you. You look like maybe you need to sit down.”
The woman looked into Marie’s face for several seconds and said, “You’re really trying to help me.”
“Of course I am. Come on, let’s sit down over here.”
The two women sat down on a nearby bench.
“All I wanted was a library card.”
“And she wouldn’t give you one?”
“No. She said, ‘Your kind is not welcome in here.’ I knew that, but the closest library for us is in Kansas City, and that’s too far for me to go.”
Marie held out her hand. “My name is Marie.”
The woman shook her hand. “I’m Doretha. Doretha Scott. I’m sorry I snapped at you. I’m not used to white people trying to help me.”
Marie smiled. “I’m not white. That is, I’m not all white. My father is a mulatto.” She paused. “Want to have some fun?”
The woman looked at her with a curious eye.
“Was there a particular book you were interested in or just the card?”
“I was told there might be a book on Harriet Tubman.” She paused. “She was my grandmother.”
“Really?”
The woman nodded.
“You wait here. And don’t you dare leave this bench. Just keep watching for me to wave you in.”
Marie walked as fast as she could back into the library and renewed her card. Then she went outside and waved to Doretha. At first Doretha didn’t understand what she was trying to say to her and just waved back.
No, come here,
Marie mouthed, gesturing her to come to her.
Doretha finally came over to her and was about to say something, when Marie interrupted.
“Just follow me.”
Marie walked into the library with Doretha on her arm.
“Hold it,” the clerk said. “What is she doing in here?”
“She’s my grandmother!”
Doretha gasped.
Marie proceeded to walk past the clerk, Doretha still on her arm and holding on tight.
The two women disappeared behind a row of shelving, looked at each other, and giggled.
“C’mon. Let’s find that book and get out of here before they kick us out,” Marie said.
They never did find the book. Marie offered to walk with Doretha to her home on the other side of town, but Doretha said she didn’t think that was a very good idea. “You’ll be just about as welcome in my neighborhood as I am here.”
“Then you start walking. I’m going to pick up my car and come get you. I want to hear about your grandmother.”
Doretha gave Marie a peculiar look before she shrugged her shoulders and said, “Okay.”
On the way to Doretha’s neighborhood, she told Marie about her grandmother, Harriet Tubman. A railroad conductor for the Underground Railroad, she had helped hundreds of slaves to freedom in the early 1850s. “They called her Moses for what she did.” Doretha laughed. “My mother told me there was a forty-thousand-dollar bounty on her head for that.”
“She sounds like quite the woman.”
“Oh, it gets better. Later, at least from what my mother was told, she worked for the Union Army as a spy during the Civil War. And after that, before she died, she was involved in women’s suffrage in New York. Do you know she was given full military honors at her funeral, with Booker T. Washington himself giving her eulogy?”
“I wish we could have found the book. That’s quite a story.”
As they neared Doretha’s neighborhood, the scenery changed. A world apart from Marie’s neighborhood, the homes here were small and in need of repair. The lawns, if you could even call them that, were mostly dirt and weeds. Doretha asked to be dropped off.
Marie wrote down her address and phone number for her. “You call me any time you want a book from the library, Doretha. I mean that.”
She watched her walk down the dirt road toward a long row of unpainted houses until she disappeared in one of the driveways, the smell of poverty drifting into the car. She hoped she would hear from her, but was afraid she might not.
The next day, Marie called her friend Esther at Marshall Field’s and asked her if she could ask their guest services girl to locate a book on Harriet Tubman. A week later, Esther called her back and said they found one titled
Harriet Tubman, the Moses of Her People
.
“Will you order two copies for me? I’ll send you a check.”
Marie was grateful she had unlocked the ground floor door to her apartment right before Rachael was due to arrive, because when she came, the young girl appeared to defy gravity as she raced up the steps two at a time. “Marie, I’m here!” Walter trailed close behind with her suitcase.
Marie gave her a big hug. “How was the trip?”
Rachael rolled her eyes. “Boring,” she moaned. “So this is your pad? Cool.” She took in everything as she walked around. “Man, I can’t wait ‘til I can have a place of my own someday.”
“You’ve got quite a ways to go, don’t you think?”
“I guess so.”
“You must be hungry. What shall we do for dinner? Go out or stay in? Your choice.”
Rachael was reading the book titles on Marie’s bookshelves. “Stay in.”
“Do you like Chinese food?”
“I don’t know. Never had it.”
Marie gawked at her in disbelief. “You’ve never had Chinese food?”
Rachael shook her head.
“Well, you’re in for a surprise tonight then. Let’s get you settled, and then we’ll walk over to Madame Woo’s.”
On the walk back to Marie’s apartment, Rachael asked her a question Marie had a feeling would come sooner or later. “How come I’ve never seen you at the Brookses’ house before?”
“That’s a long story.” Marie wasn’t sure how much she should tell a twelve-year-old. “What have you heard so far?”
“I asked Dad, and he said it was grown-up business. Then I asked Grandma, and she said you were part of the family. But that didn’t make sense ‘cause you’re…uh, well, you’re not…”
“They’re colored and I’m not? Is that what you’re trying to say?”
Rachael nodded.
“Well, the truth is I am colored…part colored, anyway. It’s just that I have very light skin, so not many people would know that.”
Rachael’s eyes grew wide.
“I know. It’s pretty weird.”
“So how are you part of the family? I don’t get it.”
Marie hesitated before deciding the truth was the right route to take. “Rachael, Jonathan is my father.”
They were halfway down Marie’s driveway. Rachael stopped dead in her tracks. “Get out of here!”
